{"id":310745,"date":"2025-12-29T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=310745"},"modified":"2025-12-29T13:37:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T13:37:38","slug":"cbs-60-minutes-censorship-rings-another-alarm-warning-of-corporate-medias-threat-to-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/12\/cbs-60-minutes-censorship-rings-another-alarm-warning-of-corporate-medias-threat-to-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"CBS 60 Minutes Censorship Rings Another Alarm, Warning of Corporate Media\u2019s Threat to Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

CECOT, or \u201cTerrorism Confinement Center,\u201d is a prison in El Salvador built in 2022 as part of Nayib Bukele\u2019s regime alleged crackdown on gang violence.\u00a0 Democracy NOW!<\/p><\/div>\n

24 Dec 2025 –\u00a0<\/em>This week, we learned another lesson about how corporate media consolidation corrupts democracy. A story on President Donald Trump\u2019s mass deportation of shackled Venezuelan men to El Salvador\u2019s notorious CECOT<\/span> prison was to air on CBS\u2019s flagship news magazine, \u201c60 Minutes.\u201d <\/a>The segment was spiked by CBS\u2019 newly-installed Editor-in Chief Bari Weiss. This censorship exposes a web of conflicts of interest, and demonstrates, yet again, that democracy depends on a strong, independent media that is a true fourth estate, not \u201cfor the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

CECOT<\/span>, or \u201cTerrorism Confinement Center,\u201d is a prison in El Salvador built in 2022 as part of President Nayib Bukele\u2019s alleged crackdown on gang violence. Bukele, who calls himself \u201cthe coolest dictator in the world,\u201d is an authoritarian, using mass imprisonment and torture at CECOT<\/span> as one tool to exert control. Trump, who loves strongmen who praise him, is a great admirer of Bukele.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration agreed to pay El Salvador close to $5 million to imprison people deported from the US. As early as March, prisoners were secretly flown to CECOT<\/span> by the Department of Homeland Security, in violation of a federal court order. Among them was the illegally deported Salvadoran native Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and at least 252 Venezuelan men. Many of the Venezuelans were ultimately sent back to their home country in exchange for the Venezuelan government\u2019s release of ten US prisoners. Much of what we know about CECOT<\/span> comes from the eyewitness testimony of these men, and from evidence gathered by human rights researchers.<\/p>\n

The spiked \u201c60 Minutes\u201d piece had already been sent to Canada, where it runs weekly, and aired there as scheduled. A recording quickly became available online and went viral.<\/p>\n

It opens with correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt began as soon as the planes landed. The deportees thought they were headed from the U.S. back to Venezuela. But instead, they were shackled, paraded in front of cameras and delivered to CECOT<\/span>, the notorious maximum-security prison in El Salvador, where they told 60 Minutes they endured four months of hell.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Did you think you were going to die there?\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Luis Mu\u00f1oz Pinto: \u201cWe thought we were already the living dead, honestly.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So why did Bari Weiss kill the story? She reportedly claimed the story needed more voices from the Trump administration, yet Alfonsi and her colleagues had already requested comment from the White House, the State Department and Homeland Security. In an internal email, Alfonsi wrote, \u201cIf the administration\u2019s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recall, Trump sued CBS<\/span> over a \u201c60 Minutes\u201d interview with Kamala Harris, which he claimed was selectively edited to help her campaign. While legal experts say CBS<\/span> would have easily won that case, CBS\u2019s parent company, Paramount, was hoping to be bought by Skydance Media, owned by the son of billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison. So Paramount settled with Trump for $15 million. The merger was then approved by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, the Ellisons bought Bari Weiss\u2019 rightwing news website for $150 million, then installed her as Editor-in-Chief of CBS<\/span> News.<\/p>\n

Larry Ellison and his son David now want to add to their media empire, attempting to acquire Warner Brothers\/Discovery in a hostile takeover. Warner Brothers\/Discovery, which owns HBO<\/span> and CNN<\/span> among other media properties, rebuffed the Ellisons\u2019 bid in favor of a competing offer from Netflix (that bid does not include HBO<\/span> or CNN<\/span>).<\/p>\n

Neither merger is in the public interest, as fewer and fewer media giants gobble up more and more, restricting consumer choice and the power of creators \u2013 writers, actors, directors, etc. \u2013 to demand fair treatment. Trump has said he intends to intervene, and could wield the government\u2019s regulatory authority \u2013 corruptly \u2013 to favor one buyer over the other.<\/p>\n

So, both Netflix and the Ellisons\u2019 Paramount\/Skydance have an interest in currying favor with Trump.<\/p>\n

And therein lies the reason why CBS<\/span>, owned by Paramount\/Skydance, spiked an important \u201c60 Minutes\u201d story of the US deporting innocent men to a foreign black site, to be tortured.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the first tenets of ethics in journalism is to seek truth and report it,\u201d<\/em> Alexa Koenig<\/a> of the Human Rights Center at University of California, Berkeley, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. She was interviewed by \u201c60 Minutes\u201d about the center\u2019s research on torture and other abuses at CECOT<\/span>. \u201cThis is a big moment for American politics, for getting facts and truth out to the public about what has been done in their name, what is being done with taxpayer dollars.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

News organizations cannot function under corrupt corporate control, answering to billionaire bosses and politicians. When that happens, democracy dies, and dictators rise.<\/p>\n

We need, and the public must demand, a truly independent media.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Amy Goodman is the host of \u201c<\/em>Democracy Now!\u201d a daily international TV\/radio news hour airing on more than 900 stations in North America. She is the author of <\/em>Breaking the Sound Barrier, released in paperback and now a <\/em>New York Times best-seller.<\/em><\/p>\n

Denis Moynihan is the co-founder of <\/em>Democracy Now! Since 2002, he has participated in the organization\u2019s worldwide distribution, infrastructure development, and the coordination of complex live broadcasts from many continents. He lives in Denver where he is developing a new noncommercial community radio station.<\/em><\/p>\n

The original content of this program is licensed under a <\/em>Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 democracynow.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

24 Dec 2025 – The Trump administration agreed to pay El Salvador close to $5 million to imprison people deported from the US. As early as March, prisoners were secretly flown to CECOT-Terrorism Confinement Center by the Department of Homeland Security, in violation of a federal court order. We need, and the public must demand, a truly independent media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":310748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[2532,2375,3480,3541,3096,1785,2314,550,2663,2882,1678,2881,1855,234,2759,249,70],"class_list":["post-310745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-60-minutes","tag-alternative-media","tag-anti-immigration","tag-cbs-news","tag-cecot-center-for-the-confinement-of-terrorism","tag-censorship","tag-corporate-media","tag-corruption","tag-el-salvador","tag-engaged-journalism","tag-investigative-journalism","tag-journalistic-ethics","tag-mainstream-media-msm","tag-media","tag-prisons","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310745"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310910,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310745\/revisions\/310910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}